scholarly journals Surveillance System Evaluations Provide Evidence to Improve Public Health Practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverley J. Paterson ◽  
David N. Durrheim
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Health Practice ◽  
Outbreak Response ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Surveillance Practice

Surveillance evaluations of surveillance systems should provide evidence to improve public health practice. In response to surveillance evaluation findings amongst Pacific Island Countries and Territories that identified a critical need to better equip local public health officials with skills to rapidly appropriately respond to suspected infectious disease outbreaks across the Pacific, the RAPID (Response and Analysis for Pacific Infectious Diseases) project was implemented to strengthen capacity in surveillance, epidemiology and outbreak response. The RAPID project is a notable example of how evidence gathered through a surveillance evaluation can be used to improve public health surveillance practice.

Use and effectiveness of mHealth technologies in tracking the spread of infectious disease outbreaks and their implications for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review protocol (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madison Milne-Ives ◽  
Simon Rowland ◽  
Alison McGregor ◽  
J Edward Fitzgerald ◽  
Edward Meinert
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Practice ◽  
Public Health Response ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks

BACKGROUND The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mHealth as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices. A number of mHealth devices, primarily apps designed to support contact tracing, have been utilised as part of the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The value of mHealth devices in augmenting public health practice is however yet to be defined. OBJECTIVE The study aims to address three research questions: (1) What digital technologies are being used to track the symptoms and spread of infectious disease outbreaks and what strategies do they use to do so? (2) How effective and cost-effective are digital technologies at tracking the spread of infectious disease outbreaks and what are their strengths and limitations? (3) What are the user perspectives on the usability and effectiveness of these technologies? METHODS The PICOS template and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P) will be followed for this systematic review. The review will be composed of a literature search, article selection, data extraction, quality appraisal, data analysis, and a discussion of the implications of the data for the current COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS N/A CONCLUSIONS This systematic review will summarise the available evidence for use of mHealth devices for tracking the spread of infectious disease outbreaks. These results are potentially valuable for informing public health policy during infectious disease outbreaks such as the current Covid-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Ethics of instantaneous contact tracing using mobile phone apps in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7) ◽  
pp. 427-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Parker ◽  
Christophe Fraser ◽  
Lucie Abeler-Dörner ◽  
David Bonsall
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Mobile Phone Data ◽  
Public Health Response ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Ethical Implications

In this paper we discuss ethical implications of the use of mobile phone apps in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact tracing is a well-established feature of public health practice during infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics. However, the high proportion of pre-symptomatic transmission in COVID-19 means that standard contact tracing methods are too slow to stop the progression of infection through the population. To address this problem, many countries around the world have deployed or are developing mobile phone apps capable of supporting instantaneous contact tracing. Informed by the on-going mapping of ‘proximity events’ these apps are intended both to inform public health policy and to provide alerts to individuals who have been in contact with a person with the infection. The proposed use of mobile phone data for ‘intelligent physical distancing’ in such contexts raises a number of important ethical questions. In our paper, we outline some ethical considerations that need to be addressed in any deployment of this kind of approach as part of a multidimensional public health response. We also, briefly, explore the implications for its use in future infectious disease outbreaks.

Driving Quality Improvement in Local Public Health Practice

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penney Berryman Davis ◽  
Jessica Solomon ◽  
Grace Gorenflo
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Quality Improvement ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Health Practice ◽  
Local Public Health

An Enhanced Approach to Distinguishing Public Health Practice and Human Subjects Research

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Systematic Investigation ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Health Practice ◽  
Human Subjects Research

What are the Differences between Public Health Practice and Research? This perplexing question constantly arises in the planning and performance of public health activities involving the acquisition and use of identifiable health information. Public health agencies collect and analyze significant identifiable health data from health care providers, insurers, other agencies, or individuals to perform an array of public health activities. These activities include surveillance (e.g., reporting requirements, disease registries, sentinel networks), epidemiological investigations (e.g., to investigate disease outbreaks), and evaluation and monitoring (e.g., public health program development and analysis, oversight functions). Few debate that these essential public health activities, often specifically authorized by law, are classifiable as public health practice.Other public health activities in which identifiable health data are acquired or used, however, can resemble, include, or constitute human subjects research. “Human subjects research” is legally defined as “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge” that involves living human subjects (or their identifiable, private data).

scholarly journals Using next generation matrices to estimate the proportion of cases that are not detected in an outbreak

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Juliette T Unwin ◽  
Anne Cori ◽  
Natsuko Imai ◽  
Katy A M Gaythorpe ◽  
Sangeeta Bhatia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Credible Interval ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Outbreak Response ◽  
Disease Response ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Novel Method

Contact tracing, where exposed individuals are followed up to break ongoing transmission chains, is a key pillar of outbreak response for many infectious disease outbreaks, such as Ebola and SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, these systems are not fully effective, and cases can still go undetected as people may not know or remember all of their contacts or contacts may not be able to be traced. A large proportion of undetected cases suggests poor contact tracing and surveillance systems, which could be a potential area of improvement for a disease response. In this paper, we present a novel method for estimating the proportion of cases that are not detected during an outbreak. Our method uses next generation matrices that are parameterized by linked contact tracing and case line-lists. We use this method to investigate the proportion of undetected cases in two case studies: the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in New Zealand during 2020 and the West African Ebola outbreak in Guinea during 2014. We estimate that only 6% of SARS-CoV-2 cases were not detected in New Zealand (95% credible interval: 1.31 - 16.7%), but over 60% of Ebola cases were not detected in Guinea (95% credible interval: 15 - 90%).

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